The legacy of Christine Chubbuck:

Britain's obsession with reality television reached new heights — or depths — Wednesday night with the broadcast of the assisted suicide of the 59-year-old terminally ill American at a Swiss clinic...

"There is a growing appetite from the British public for increasingly bizarre reality shows," said (an anti-euthanasia) group's director, Peter Saunders. "We'd see it as a new milestone. It glorifies assisted dying when there is a very active campaign by the pro-suicide lobby to get the issue back into Parliament."

(British Prime Minister Gordon) Brown did not venture an opinion, saying only that the government's "television watchdogs" will scrutinize the show after it is broadcast.

Next, we'll be broadcasting executions.

Watching "reality TV" is like throwing raw meat to the ugliest things hiding in the human psyche. How long until movies like this one and this one and this one are seen as prophetic rather than satirical?

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